


The Atonement

by Tokyo_the_Glaive



Series: He Calls Me Home [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 21:51:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5886643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tokyo_the_Glaive/pseuds/Tokyo_the_Glaive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn's relapsing after the events on D'Qar.  He distances himself from Poe while he tries to piece himself back together, with the help of General Organa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Atonement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dersteck](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dersteck/gifts).



Finn works himself to the bone over the next week.

The Resistance, he gathers, tends to set up someplace where they can exploit pre-existing infrastructure.  Not so with the Litha system, but then, they don’t plan to stay long.  They need to find a new semi-permanent base of operations, and the number of unoccupied planets left to hide on in the galaxy is steadily dwindling.

Finn actively doesn’t think about it.  He keeps his mind as blank as possible.  The day he wakes up in Poe’s arms on that transporter, he gingerly extricates himself and finds General Organa.

“Orders, General,” he says quietly.

“Excuse me?” she asks.

Finn looks squarely at his shoes.  He can’t cope, not now.  He needs something familiar, preferably from someone he trusts.  The rational part of his mind tells him that he can’t trust anyone, least of all himself.  (He knows that isn’t true, he really does, because there’s _Poe_ and _Rey_ , but they can’t do this for him.)

“I need orders, General,” he says, “or I’ll go mad.”

Miraculously, she understands.

General Organa sets Finn to work on communications first.  He learns how to hardwire holotech and to lay the groundwork for fuel lines from a few Resistance engineers.  He copies their movements as best as he can, working as fast as he dares.  He keeps his mind on his tasks, addresses everyone with respect, and looks no one in the eye.  He attracts stares, he knows--he hasn’t been like this since joining the Resistance because he’s been trying so hard to fit in, to be a normal person, but he can’t because he’s not--but he doesn’t let it bother him.  It can’t bother him.  He has a mission, he has orders.

Poe doesn’t come find him.  Finn forces himself to think that a good sign.  He doesn’t deserve to be “Mr. Dameron”, doesn’t deserve Poe’s smiles and kind words.  He deserves the work he’s been given, and he’ll do that until he earns more.

(He considers, briefly, what Poe would say to such talk.  No doubt he’d be horrified.  Finn can see the look on Poe’s face even with his eyes closed.  It’s why he can’t tell Poe.  Poe would lie, would say that Finn deserved the world.)

(Finn scratches that thought out.  He can’t envision Poe a liar, but he can’t imagine that he deserves anything but hard labor.  He resolves to quash his imagination completely and deal entirely in the tasks set before him.)

* * *

Finn reports to General Organa three times a day, always at the same hour.  Following the second day of Finn’s self-imposed penance, Finn notices that the General has cleared these times in her schedule such that they are alone.

The routine is simple enough: in the morning, Finn requests orders.  Often, he’s instructed to continue his tasks from the previous day.  At midday, Finn offers a report on his work, requesting new orders if necessary.  At nightfall, Finn requests recess until the next morning.  General Organa is no less precise.  She gives orders with very clear boundaries on what Finn can and cannot do.  She listens to his reports with a discerning ear, praising where praise is deserved.  She does not, as Finn expects, deny his requests for recess each evening, even when tasks are unfinished.

He takes it to heart that he’s doing good work, at long last.  There’s hope for atonement.

(If he still can’t sleep, he doesn’t tell anyone.  He’s taken to sleeping with a shirt stuffed into his mouth.  That way, if he has a nightmare and wakes screaming, it’s less likely that anyone will hear.  No sense in bothering anyone about this, not at all.)

(The first night on Litha without Poe at his side, Finn thinks about the promise of Bespin and Poe’s brilliant grin.  He wants to deserve that, he wants--)

* * *

On the ninth day of life on Litha, Finn awakes, dresses, eats, and reports to General Organa.

She isn’t alone this time.  Finn catches sight of a hologram fizzling out of existence  just as he enters her quarters at her permission.  She’s sitting at a small desk in a room that’s still more tent than office.

“Finn,” General Organa says.  Finn pauses.  In each of these encounters, he’s always been the first to speak--to ask for orders.  To have her speak first is to break protocol.  He accepts the change because she is the General.  She defines protocol.  “I have a special job for you.”

Finn stands up a little straighter.

“I’d like you to begin shadowing Dr. Atteanr.  You will report to him each day as you have with me.”

Finn’s shoulders sag a little.  “Permission to speak, General?”

General Organa watches him for a long moment.  “Yes,” she says.

“Has my work been unsatisfactory?”

Finn watches General Organa’s face contort several times before it settles into a neutral frown.  “It has been most satisfactory,” she says.  “However--”

Finn braces himself.  General Organa notices and hesitates.

“However,” she continues, “I believe that you need something more than heavy lifting.”  Finn bows his head.  “I’ve considered the matter, and I believe that helping others to heal will help you to as well.”

Finn’s head shoots back up.  “Me?” he asks.  Personality leeches into that single syllable, and he has to resist the urge to bite his tongue.

General Organa smiles tightly.  “Sit down, Finn.  If it helps, consider it an order.”

It does help, and Finn sits.  There’s only one seat other than the one the General’s currently occupying, and it’s more comfortable than Finn deserves.  His hands twitch at his sides.  He can’t do anything right, can he, it’s just--

“I want to help you,” General Organa says.

“I shouldn’t need help,” Finn replies automatically.

The General steeples her hands before her.  “You told Dameron something similar.”

Finn’s breath catches in his chest.  He doesn’t know what’s coming, and he hates it.

“Now, I know what you’re doing,” General Organa says.  “You took lives, and you feel responsible.  You _are_ responsible.”  Finn swallows.  He doesn’t think he could speak even if he wanted to, his throat feels so constricted and dry.  He realizes belatedly that he’s about to cry.

“But,” General Organa says, “you cannot allow that to define you.  This is a war, make no mistake, and many of the Resistance have taken lives.  While we justify those losses as necessary, it is nonetheless true that we’ve killed, and will continue to kill, in the name of a free galaxy.  Along the way, innocents have died.  Friends, allies, and enemies alike have died.  We must accept those losses and move on.”

Finn remains silent.  What is there to say?  He has no voice in this matter.

“You killed five defectors from the First Order.  You saw them approaching our base and acted on the information that you had.  You can’t change their deaths.”  Finn stares at his knee caps.  “Finn, I want you to tell me what’s on your mind.  Consider it an order.”

Finn shuts his eyes.  “They didn’t deserve death.”

“No, they didn’t,” General Organa says, “but you don’t deserve to live the rest of your life denying yourself joy because of it.”

* * *

Dr. Atteanr is nearly half Finn’s height.  He’s upbeat, perky, and altogether too energetic.  Finn can’t help but like him right from the start.

“Finn, Finn Dameron!” Dr. Atteanr cries upon laying eyes on Finn.  “Oh, how wonderful it is to meet you!  The General’s told me much about you.  Come, come!”  Dr. Atteanr gestures for Finn to follow him into one of the few finished structures, the medbay.

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Atteanr says, bustling around, “I’ve heard much about you.  You’ll be following my direction for the foreseeable future, she said.  How wonderful it will be to have another pair of hands--and such young hands at that!  I’ll bet you don’t have a single tremor, do you?”

Dr. Atteanr takes a hold of Finn’s hands and holds them gingerly.  He stares at them as if they hold the secrets to the universe.

“Nary a shake in an artery,” Dr. Atteanr says, beaming.  “Oh, this will be splendid.”

Dr. Atteanr keeps up a steady litany of conversation as he shows Finn where everything is.  There are several bacta tanks, but there are far more bacta patches.  There are drawers full of things Finn has never heard of, myriad bottles and vials each labelled with a careful hand.  Syringes and needles, empty, sterile, and ready for use, sit nearby.  There are bandages rolled into tight wads and held together with elastic, and several long knives for surgery.

By the end of it, there’s a definitive shake in Finn’s hands, and his stomach’s ready to revolt.

“Take a lunch break,” Dr. Atteanr says cheerfully.  If he notices that Finn’s about to pass out just thinking about the medbay, he doesn’t say so much.  “When you return, we’ll get you started training.”

Finn knows he can’t hold down lunch, so he finds General Organa.

“I can’t,” he tells her.  “I can’t.”

“Queasy?” General Organa asks.  Finn nods vigorously.  “You can do it, and you will.”

Finn throws up behind the medbay before he returns to his new work.  It feels more of a punishment than it did before he got started, having to stare down all of these tools that allegedly heal.  Finn can only envision the hurt they can potentially do.

“Only in the wrong hands,” Dr. Atteanr says mildly before Finn even realizes that he’s spoken his thoughts aloud.  “Come, let’s learn how to heal, then.”

Finn prays that his hands aren’t the wrong hands as Dr. Atteanr breaks out a model of the humanoid body.

* * *

Three days later, they leave Litha for Baler, an old Imperial stronghold, abandoned since long before the fall of the Galactic Empire.

Poe was one of the scouts who found the location, Finn knows.  He imagines that Poe’s been here for the past two weeks, away from Finn, working for the good of the Resistance.

The thought twists Finn’s guts more than he cares to admit, so he doesn’t.

Dr. Atteanr loves Finn.  He says so much every day, telling Finn to thank General Organa for giving him such a wonderful pair of hands.  Finn is, by his own admission, a quick study.  Before, he knew how to hurt the humanoid body; now he knows why it hurts and how to stop that hurt.  Dr. Atteanr has taught him how to stitch up cuts both deep and shallow, how to extract most poisons from the body, and how to apply bacta patches appropriately.

Finn can’t practice the latter two skills outside of the medbay, but the first, stitching things up, is proving quite useful.  He has a handkerchief and a spool of red thread that Dr. Atteanr gave him, and he puts stitches into cloth whenever he has a free moment.  He works quickly, pretending it’s skin.  He makes row after row of neat bolts that he undoes when he runs out of room.

“Do you have anything that would work on fabric?” Finn asked him one day, before they left Litha.  It was one of the few non-work-related questions Finn had asked.  His personality had just begun to reemerge through the efforts of the infectiously-buoyant Dr. Atteanr.

“Not here, no,” Dr. Attenar said, thinking hard.  “But I’m sure we have some somewhere.  After all, the flight suits don’t stitch themselves.  You ought to ask around.”

Finn does ask, when they’ve landed on Baler.  He still has the jacket--the jacket that kept him from taking a lightsabre to the spine, something Finn has learned would have been fatal.

“It’s likely that leather saved your life,” Dr. Atteanr had told him when Finn described why he needed the heavy thread.

Finn heard something different: _Poe had saved his life. Again_.

 _And look how he’s repaid him_ , Finn thinks sourly.  Mistakes and ignorance and worthlessness.  Finn can do better--has to do better.  He will, assuming Poe wants to talk to him at all.  Finn’s still working up the courage to find him, and he doesn’t know what will happen when they eventually come face-to-face.  Poe had forgiven him, but Finn had forced that forgiveness and--

Finn forces himself to take a deep breath.  It’s something Dr. Atteanr is always telling him to do--take a breath, take a moment, _breathe_ , you can’t heal someone if you can’t keep yourself going--and Finn listens.  He tells himself that it’s because he takes the reminders as orders, but really, he knows that he’s already slipping out of that mentality, becoming Finn again.

 _Finn Dameron_.

He still has General Organa’s holopad.  He tells himself he’ll return it with each passing day, but instead he finds himself watching the holovid over and over.  When that’s too much--and it often is because there’s so much _joy_ in that old thing--Finn turns to the books.  They’re dry, but informative.  The first of the books is a massive tome comparing various marriage practices across the galaxy.  In it, Finn finds a section on the Jedi.  He reads how they were forbidden from marrying by the Jedi Code--were, because the Jedi are no more.

 _Except Rey_ , Finn thinks.  He wonders if she knows about this facet of the Code, if she cares.  Probably not.  She’s never needed anyone--not Finn, not Poe, probably not even Skywalker.  Finn envies her, just a little.  He thinks he needs too much.

The remainder of that first book is full of interesting bits.  The handfasting ceremonies--Finn has to get Dr. Atteanr to describe it to him because he doesn’t quite understand the terminology--draw his attention in particular, but he reads about how some cultures exchange rings, while others exchange plants, even blood.  Finn learns how, for some, it’s forbidden for anyone other than a man and a woman to marry (these cultures, Finn quickly learns, are all humanoid and generally only recognize two genders), whereas many others allow all marriages of several varieties.  In many places, Finn learns, one can marry oneself, and on one planet--Moledra, Finn reads--all children who reach the age of ten marry themselves in a ceremony designed to instill self-confidence, self-love, and self-respect.

Moledra.  Finn thinks he’d like to visit there, someday.

For the moment, he’s stuck with Baler.

Baler’s not an iceball, but it’s close.  Trees with black bark and white, spindly leaves nearly blow over in the wind, and red and white plants grow through ice-hardened black dirt and white snow.  There are hardly any large creatures living on Baler, largely because it’s cold and the trees are poisonous, but also because the Empire hunted down whatever could have survived while trying to eke out an existence for themselves during their short occupation.

Finn doesn’t know how long they’ll be staying--how long they _can_ stay in such an inhospitable place--but he knows that he’s going to need to learn how to extract the poison from the trees as soon as possible.

He knows he’s made progress because he feels a thrill at the challenge.  He hasn’t seen an serious injury yet, just a few cuts and scrapes on Litha, a few of them complicated by toxins from the local flora, but he can do this.  He can heal--not everyone, Dr. Atteanr makes it very clear that there are some, perhaps many, that he will lose if he takes a career as a medic--but he can _try_.  He doesn’t have to be the best shot in the Resistance.  He has fine, steady hands, and an attention to detail.

He hasn’t forgiven himself for the five corpses that may never leave D’Qar, but he thinks he’s found a good way to atone--good enough, even, to earn the right to be Finn Dameron.  



End file.
